


to live at all is miracle enough

by ssstrychnine



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4308222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cheedo is almost eight thousand days old when she realises what she wants from Dag.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to live at all is miracle enough

Cheedo is more than eight thousand days old and she thinks that she has been waiting for Dag for every one of them. They are bound together, yes; they are limbs and hair and hands together. But Dag is careful, and Dag is quiet, and Dag won’t just take the step that Cheedo wants her to. She was called fragile once, but she does not fit her title as well as Toast fits Knowing, and Angharad fit Splendid. She wore white for Furiosa; she let Rictus touch her and she did not shatter. 

They spend their mornings in the garden, and Dag talks to her plants like they are the child that died, and Cheedo watches her from under her eyelashes, and buries her hands in the dirt. Dag is still something unknowable, even to Cheedo, even after thousands of days pressed against her, shoulder to hip. She almost never talks about where she’d been before she came to the Vault, but Cheedo catches hints of things, in the way she speaks, in the names she gives the flowers. When they are wives still, Capable tells her that Dag had already known how to read when she first arrived. She devoured books like fruits, and used Miss Giddy’s needles to stain her fingers.

“The sun is for my mother,” she tells Cheedo, just before they run, one tiny smudge of information, like water from her mouth. “She married the moon and I was born.” 

“I grew from the ground,” Cheedo murmurs. “I came from a cabbage.” 

“That’s why I like you best,” says Dag.

In truth, Cheedo comes from the Wretched. Her mother is taken for her milk, but she is gone when Cheedo is taken for her eyes, her skin, her hair, her womb. The Organic Mechanic licks his fingers and Cheedo thinks of the dirt, the flat-bed, burnt earth, the carved out hollows where she slept, under the shadow of the Citadel. The Organic Mechanic licks his fingers, and Cheedo focuses on the girls she will live with now, watching her from across the room. The one with white hair and crooked limbs and her fingers in her mouth, the one with hair like blood and eyes steady as stone, the one with short hair and a scowl and her feet planted on the floor like nothing will ever knock her down. The girl all gold, with her lips pursed, and her cheeks scared like the cracks in a thirsty earth. The Organic Mechanic licks his fingers, and Cheedo loves them for the way they stare at him, like he is encroaching on something precious as water. 

Their time in the Vault is as terrible as Organic’s fingers promised. Joe doesn't do to Cheedo what he does to her sisters, the other pieces of her, but he does other things. Dag takes her into the crook of her bony elbow, and tells her what the colours of the sky mean, and reads her fairy tales, and Cheedo doesn't understand why mothers must be evil, but she does understand a man who will kiss a girl while she’s sleeping. 

Miss Giddy is like warm, worn paper, and Cheedo reads the words pricked into her skin for hours. 

“Will you write something for me?” she asks.

“You may write your name,” Miss Giddy says, and with a shaking hand, Cheedo does, on the webbing between her fingers. 

They leave her behind, and Cheedo weeps, and Dag gives her gloves to wipe her tears, and Cheedo gives her one back, so they can match, and the desert stretches out under the wheels of the Rig like Angharad’s golden hair. Angharad’s golden limbs. Angharad’s golden voice. Angharad’s scarlet blood. Cheedo does not like to think of what she did then, but she knows she would do it over again, exactly the same, and Dag still would not hate her. 

There are mothers then, like fairy tales, and not like fairy tales. Women with hands like maps, and bags of treasure, and hair like clouds. 

“I can’t wait for them to see it,” Furiosa says, and something inside of Cheedo breaks when the Vuvalini tell her there is nothing else. (But she is still not fragile, not even then). 

They go back, and Cheedo doesn't care. She has lived there twice before, in the dirt and in the sky. Dag is with her, clutching the bag of seeds to her chest, and Cheedo thinks that there has never been someone so crooked, and beautiful. Capable is there too, and Furiosa, and Toast, and the Vuvalini left. Cheedo spends almost a full day sleeping, in the corner of a room that is not the Vault, and then she get to work. 

Cheedo is a child then, not much more than five thousand days old, but she goes to the Wretched, and she talks with them, and she tells them they are Wretched no longer. It is Cheedo who gives water to those who work the lifts, and tells them they can stop, and tells them they are their own. It is Cheedo who is down in the dirt when the people start to build, and she blisters her hands, and bloodies her knuckles, and bruises her shins in helping them. Capable puts up the walls, and the reservoir. Toast keeps those who want to work with guns and cars, though they are not War Boys. Dag makes things grow. Furiosa is the silent comfort that is there to catch them if they fall, and to teach them how to never fall again.  
Terrible things happen, but they are terrible things that do not take their voices. Capable loses two fingers, helping to haul a piece of wall into place. A fever strikes and kills seven, eight, nine. Toast is cut, shoulder to hip, by a raider with a mouth full of razor blades. Cheedo learns that she cannot have children, and she laughs.

“Us empty girls,” says Dag, dragging her sun-drawn finger across her belly.

“No,” Cheedo corrects. “We don’t need to have children to be full.” 

“I have seeds.”

“You have me.” 

Cheedo is almost eight thousand days old, and she is only just realising what she wants from Dag, and it takes her breath away. She knows about fairy tales where the prince steals a kiss, and the princess has no choice. She knows about fairy tales where a girl eats a fruit and it kills her. She does not know any fairy tales where the princess throws it all away and chooses another princess. She goes to Furiosa, who is surprised, and gentle.

“You can love anyone you want,” she says. “When I was young I loved a girl called Val.”

“And now you love Max.”

Furiosa doesn't say anything to that; she looks away, she scrapes a fingernail across one of the leather straps holding her prosthetic in place. Cheedo huffs out a sigh, but doesn't push it. Max comes back sometimes, and he shares Furiosa’s room sometimes, but she doesn't speak of him when he’s gone. Cheedo loves Dag, and it seems impossible to keep it to herself now that she knows this. It seems impossible that anyone would want to be silent. 

But when she goes to Dag to declare herself, to explain that she knows fairy tales and she has been asleep for eight thousand days, she cannot speak. Dag is in the herb garden, and she is dressed in tea-dyed green, and she has a smudge of dirt across her cheekbone, and Cheedo can hardly even open her mouth. 

“Do you need basil for the skin shop?” Dag asks, dragging a hand across the bridge of her nose.

“No I...” Cheedo frowns. “I wanted to help you.”

Dag nods, points to a tray of seedlings that need replanting, and Cheedo kneels down next to her in the dirt. 

They spend their mornings in the garden, and Dag talks to her plants like they are children on their own, and Cheedo watches her from under her eyelashes, and loves her, and loves the plants, and loves the water. There are fairy tales in her head, and in her heart. Perhaps Dag is knoweable after all, Cheedo thinks, perhaps she understands the scars on her knuckles, and the prayers, and the words. They have lived together as wives, and they have lived together as fugitives, and they have lived together as women. Dag spies a beetle amongst her green things, and she plucks it from a leaf and scowls ferociously.

“I’ll cook you into plant food,” she tells the insect sternly, but she puts it to the wall instead, and watches it crawl up concrete, and she smiles. 

“Come and live in my room,” Cheedo tells her, squinting into the sun, trying to see Dag’s sky-struck eyes.

“Come and live in your room,” Dag echoes, sounding confused. “But we aren't wives anymore.” 

“No, but we might be something sweeter.” 

Dag doesn't say anything to that, but she moves into shadow, and Cheedo can see her clearly now. Scarecrow limbs, and scarecrow hair, and scarecrow fingers pressed to her teeth. She is frowning. Cheedo holds her breath. Dag’s frown smooths out, and she looks thoughtful then, and her eyes dart around the room, from plant to plant, and then they finally rest on her, and she looks calm and cool as water. Cheedo gets to her feet. She remembers climbing out of the War Rig, and calling out to Rictus. She remembers helping Furiosa up. She crosses the room in three steps, and she pulls Dag’s hands from her mouth, and she leans up, and kisses her, and no fairy tale could tell her the truth of this. Dag’s hands at her elbows, and then at her waist, and her mouth soft, and her limbs sunshine warm. Cheedo’s arms around her neck, and in her hair, and their bare feet touching, and the insides of their thighs. Cheedo pulls away finally, and Dag touches her mouth, and touches her hair, and then shuffles back, just a step. 

“We can grow flowers in your room,” Dag says, and Cheedo nods, and they kneel back down in the dirt.

**Author's Note:**

> so i wrote fic about these girls that started in the vault and i've realised that cheedo is much too young, actually. i didn't want to delete the fic though, i do ship these girls, but my um.. scope? has narrowed?? yes. ok. the title is from a mervyn peake poem. thank you for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] to live at all is miracle enough](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4465934) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




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